With the advent of computer technology, vehicle dispatching systems have been developed to more adequately track the location and movement of a variety of delivery vehicles. Despite the added efficiency provided by computer hardware, many problems still remain. One of the most critical of these is providing a delivery system that employs its resources as efficiently as possible.
One of the most difficult efficiency problems is the need to dispatch vehicles from point to point in response to random orders. In typical vehicle delivery environments, calls arrive at vehicle dispatch centers at various times. The pick up and delivery times and locations of these calls cannot necessarily be predicted in advance. In terms of the computer systems designed to handle deliveries, these calls are known as asynchronous events, i.e., occur randomly. Such events call upon the computer system which manages them to operate in "real-time".
The various attempts to computerize dispatch, incorporate the same artifices used in manual operations and prejudice the optimality of vehicle assignments to random events. These prejudices take the form of constraining the operation of vehicles in time or space. As an example of these constraints, a courier or cartage vehicle may be restricted to delivering in the morning and picking up materials in the afternoon. Space constraints can be also characterized by the use of zones circumscribing the allowed operational territory for each vehicle.
The reason that these constraints prejudice optimization is that they eliminate the dispatcher's opportunities to capitalize on these various random events. For example, a vehicle may be picking up something in one zone and then delivering the item to a second zone outside its own territory. Thus, it may be preferable to assign that vehicle to a new pick up in the second zone, rather than having the vehicle returned to the original zone. Such time and space constraints can cause inefficient use of the transport resources and possibly overload or under-utilize equipment.
A further efficiency problem with current computerized dispatch systems is the efficient allocation of resources in order to maximize vehicle response time. A dispatch operation is predicated on the ability to consistently judge the time and location factors associated with each event. It is simple for current systems to match a single address to a single location in space. However, it becomes harder for such systems when one or several vehicles are moving at the same time and three or four locations are being delivered to simultaneously.
To overcome the response problem, the computer system must provide a means of reproducing all of the "cognitive" processes in a manual system that are required to effectively meet the various utilization conditions. In other words, the system must factor in several considerations to the decision: the time and space implication of each event, the dispatching decision to assign the resources, and the capability of reporting the status simultaneously to all resources.
A further efficiency problem relates to the lack of computer systems which can integrate the management and the allocation of resources and effectively communicate decisions system-wide. There is also a need for a system which not only handles the basic management tasks, but successfully integrates a plurality of ancillary functions. Such functions include: address location work, point-to-point travel time estimation based upon road network and expected traffic conditions, and the communication of vital information to customers. The prior art does not have any integrated systems that overcome these problems and that also integrate these ancillary functions.
As discussed, there are several delivery systems which coordinate vehicle dispatching. One such system is the CABMATE manufactured by the Gandalf Systems Group, 350 East Dundee Road, Wheeling, Ill. CABMATE consists of a Dispatch Terminal set up in a driver dash-mounted computer terminal linked by radio transceiver to a host dispatcher's computer. The options available in the CABMATE System include customized city street directory, interface capability with accounting software, an integrated parcel dispatching system and an option which allows drivers to queue into the open available cab list before a fare is completed.
The Gandalf System, however, does not provide for any resource which optimizes the utilization of vehicles. Thus, dispatchers are not provided with optimal paths or any graphic displays of the City Maps. Cabs are selected using a first in first out system from the local queue based upon the last fare delivered. Thus, selection of cabs for fares is independent of their location.
Another mobile terminal is available from Motorola, which provides a KDT portable terminal 800 Series for message processing. The Motorola system is used primarily in inventory and business applications. Some of the features of the Motorola software include a service history review program, order status screen, billing information displays, inventory control and dynamic real-time scheduling. However, vehicle management functions which allow for priority based dispatching and allocation are not aspects of the Motorola program.